Dispersing The Crowds

This past Memorial Day weekend, Pisgah National Forest was so crowded it took visitors up to an hour to exit the forest. The traffic was backed up from the forest entrance at the intersection of U.S. 276 and N.C. 280 past Avery Creek Road, a distance of more than two miles.

The proposed solutions to this traffic jam are to widen U.S. 276 from Avery Creek Road to the entrance to the forest and construct a roundabout at the entrance to the forest. While each of these proposals could improve traffic flow at the forest’s entrance, they do not provide a solution to another challenge: the incr...